A loud splash and crash preceded the woman's screams, which quickly drowned out the droning chatter and the crackling fire.

"The baby!" she cried. One hand grabbed onto the long table's corner to keep her steady while the other hand pressed against her large, protruding stomach. " 'Tis too soon!" A cry added itself to her screams when a burning pain coursed through her body from her lower abdomen. It felt as if a sword had been heated in hot coals first before being shoved up between her legs. The woman raised her near-black eyes to the wizened matriarch sitting at the head of the long table. "Help me! The baby is coming!"

Dragana's forked tongue slid over her cracked lips as she surveyed the woman with her sapphire reptilian eyes. When the woman called out for help again, the matriarch banged her spoon against the table. "Speak up, girl! I can only understand half of what you're babbling. If you're going to be here, you will speak proper draxi."

"Voithya! Help!" the woman said, switching from her native language of tarimae to the Draconians' language. "The baby is coming!"

The matriarch shook her head. "Ztultuz. Stupid. Unless it's coming out now, we can wait. Now put a rope to those lips unless you want a thrashing." She nodded to the burly man sitting to her right, whose chin was covered in short spikes growing out of his face like a beard. "Go fill Draxter's cup like he told you." To her middle son, Dragana said, "Tuh! These Tarymians have no spine. A proper Draconian girl would never have dishonored him so with complaints."

"Don't know, Mahzer," rumbled Draxter as he watched his brother's war prize unsteadily make her way toward him after getting a new pitcher of snake bite. He'd heard these words many times since his eldest brother brought back the Tarymian woman from the last raid. "At least he's proven he can breed."

Across the table on their mother's left side, the youngest son glared at his older brother. Dragic had received the least amount of blessing from Dragus with only his mother's forked tongue and red scales all over his arms. He hissed, "What does breeding matter when it dilutes the blood? If he wanted to satisfy his lust, he should have just taken Annunziata to bed and kept the family strong."

"All in good time," said the matriarch in between bites from her stew, which made up that night's meager dinner. She leaned away from the human woman as the latter came between Dragana and Draxter to fill his cup. "Once this pig has birthed her whelp, Erdogan can take his sister and start fresh. Every good leader needs a concubine."

"You didn't think so when you killed Fahzer for taking one," returned Draxter. He suddenly yelped when he felt warm liquid pour down his lower leg and all over his feet. "Sawateh zixtu!" Draxter roared in rage while across the table Dragic let loose a shout of glee. The middle brother backhanded the woman, sending her spinning away. She saw the floor rushing to catch her, and she twisted her body in time so that her back took the brunt of the harm.

"Mahzer! Look what this dragon's whore did!"

"We will make her clean it up once she delivers." Dragana took the gnarled staff that leaned against her chair. She pointed it at the pitiful human woman who was curled into a ball around her pregnant stomach. "Take her to the meat house."

After bitterly complaining that she be made to go there by herself, the brothers stood up and retrieved their heavy coats. They took their brother's war prize by each arm and dragged her to the door. The icy wind slapped each inch of exposed skin and wound its way through all of their clothes in order to reach into their souls. The brothers shivered violently and pressed themselves against the woman's body, which felt like a furnace. The meat house was yards away, and the brothers grudgingly trekked through the snow toward it, Draxter grumbling the whole way about how the birthing liquids that drenched his shoes and pants made the lower half of his body feel numb with the cold. When the brothers swung open the doors, their nostrils were filled instantly with stale blood. The woman clenched her teeth to keep from throwing up at the sight of the meat hanging from hooks on the ceiling.

"In there," said the matriarch, who had followed them. She was layered heavily against the snow storm, but the cold still pierced her old bones like daggers. "Leave her in there to do her business."

"Will I get no help?" said the woman as the brothers shoved her inside. She stumbled and had to grab onto one of the hanging meats to keep from falling over. The ground was icy with the dried blood. There were no candles or braziers inside. The blood red moon through the open doors was the only source of light. "I cannot do this alone.

"Erdogan!" the woman said in between heavy pants when she received no answer but impassive faces. "Where's Erdogan? He needs to know I'm in labor."

"He is not coming back 'til tomorrow," said Dragana cruelly. "You better make sure it doesn't die. We need more hands around here." With that, Erdogan's two brothers shut the doors in the woman's face.

As more tears of pain slipped down her face, the woman turned around slowly and made her way to the back of the meat house. Nearly three-quarters of the way there, she slipped on a pool of frozen blood. A cry went up as she stumbled forward. Her hand reached out and slammed against the wall, preventing her from falling to the ground. She clenched her teeth as pain shot through her arm and triggered heavier waves of labor pains from within her womb. Once she regained her bearings, the woman used the wall to help her slide down to the ground, collapsing with her back against it. She had been trained to be a midwife before she had been taken by the rising Draconian leader, Erdogan. Since coming to Dracon, her main task besides being the Rodracus family slave was to deliver children in the village.

Her heartbeat racing with unordinary speed, the laboring woman took the bottom of her skirt underneath her pelvis. When she lifted up the hem, the iron ring that was the mark of her slavery frowned at her from around her left ankle. It was decorated with a large insignia of a dragon with six heads, one for each of the original families who had been banished from Tarym for breeding with the dragons a long time ago. Only Dragana could free the woman, for the matriarch kept the key on her person at all times. The sound of her skirt tore through the frigid air of the meat house as the woman ripped the cloth just below her pelvis. She laid the torn piece on the ground underneath her and prayed to the Tarymian goddess of childbirth, Helena, for safe delivery. For hours she toiled, her agonizing cries wrenching through the night and disturbing the slumber of the Rodracus family nearby. Her sweat-coated body trembled with the herculean effort. She felt as if invisible hands pressed down onto her stomach every few minutes, and her womb clenched so tightly to the precipice that she thought with each contraction that she would pass out. When the babe's head broke through her channel, the woman shouted to Helena for mercy. She felt a large contraction coming on, and with one final big push, her child slid screaming and bloody into the world. When his feet had passed through, the woman gathered up the front of her skirt and leaned forward to place her babe in its meager swaddling.

"Oh, my little one," said the new mother through wheezing pants of breath. Her dark hair clung to the sides of her face and neck. A deep fatigue settled into her bones. She leaned against the wall with a long exhale and blinked away the tears from her eyes so she could see her son better. "I am your mother, Trista. I love you."

Trista could feel the life draining from her. The heat in her body slowly recoiled first from her hands and feet and receded into her chest and stomach. With her fading heat, she cradled her son closer, covering him with the rest of her torn skirt. Feeling her warmth and her protective arms, his cries lessened, and he stopped flailing his limbs. She had no means to cut the umbilical cord without the use of her mouth, and she was becoming weaker with each minute. Her dark eyes passed over him. He had a small head of black hair like his father's, but when he opened his eyes, it was not to see purple ones but her own near-black staring back at her. Though he protested with a little mewl like a kitten, she covered his face before putting him to her breast.

Soon after Trista's child had filled his stomach with her milk, the doors swung open. When they banged against the walls, Trista didn't even have the strength to react. Dragana ambled inside. The gnarled staff made heavy thuds that echoed throughout the meat house. Her free hand went immediately over her nose. "You have the stench of death all over you."

As the matriarch drew closer, Trista said in a feeble voice, "I can stop the bleeding if you can—"

"No need," said Dragana. "You already served your purpose. The winter's been hard, and one less mouth to feed is a blessing only Dragus can give."

"But my son—"

"Aha! A son? Good." Dragana leaned her staff against the wall before taking out a knife from underneath her cloak. She cut the baby loose from his mother. "Here." Dragana dropped the knife on Trista's other side. "Do yourself a favor and end your own life before Dragus comes to take it. You know the stories of what he does to Tarymian souls in Hell." She bent over, and despite the mother's weak protests, pushed away her arms and peeled back the torn skirt. Her sapphire reptilian eyes gleamed as the babe let out a lusty scream from being exposed to the cold. But the fire of triumph was banked immediately when she saw that the baby had not been blessed by Dragus.

"Zultuz! Stupid! Dragon's whore! What have you given us?" Dragana grabbed her chest when she felt her heartbeat became too rapid. After a deep breath, she said, "No matter. We have a new slave." From her cloak, Dragana produced the key to Trista's iron ring. The matriarch took her staff to help herself bend over and unlocked the iron ring. She stood up with it. When she put the key and ring back in her cloak, her free hand shot out and scooped the babe out of the mother's arms.

"Please," whispered Trista. Behind the matriarch, her twin sons stepped through the doors. "Please."

Dragana looked down at the howling babe. "If he has anything of his father, he will grow well into the ring."

"What do we do with her?" demanded Dragic. When his mother turned around with the flailing baby in her arms, his mouth curled in disgust at the sight of its human features, but inside he felt satisfaction at his elder brother's misfortune.

"Leave her here. If she doesn't finish herself off, Dragus will come soon enough to take her," said Dragana with a toss of her silver hair. "Let the meat be with the rest of the meat."

"Stop," called Trista, but her fading call could not penetrate the hissing snickers of the brothers. Tears rolled down her cold cheeks, leaving trails of heat in their wake. The doors swung shut, and she was cast in shadows once more with only the dead hanging off the hooks to keep her company.

However, she was not alone.

In the far corner, Trista spied a dim red light. As she stared at it, it grew brighter and brighter. Her hand went around the handle of the knife that Dragana left behind, but she knew no mortal weapon could harm Him. As the red light drew closer and became brighter, Trista let go of the knife. She planted her hands on the ground on either side of her and used the last of her strength to straighten herself. Defiantly, she said, "He is not Yours. He will never be Yours. The true gods will protect him." Trista gasped as the light quickly overtook her vision, blinding her. Her entire skin erupted as if it had been set in fire. She thought she could smell the burning of her own flesh.

Then all went black.